Germany, 1992
Instagram: maxipfeil
Thesis: visual reality
"WIR" - grid of 80 inkjet prints
"visual reality" - C Print
"WIR" grid of 80 inkjet prints each 44x61.3 cm
Being alone, as a human in this world. What does that mean?
Is it a feeling? An emotion? Is it sad, or a state of mind? Is it temporary? It quite certainly is a matter of perspective and position, the same way a definition of the word would vary from person to person. But how does somebody look when alone?
Today our societies are greatly optimized and in every part, wether it is public or private, time always being at the center of it. We feel connected with others and are happy to say, we are rarely alone.
Where ever you go there are others. We eat together, live together, work together, vote together, protest together, sleep together, drink together, celebrate together and mourn together. But are we really together? (Just because we are humans, doing the same things in the same places?)
How are we when we are alone? Do we like being by ourselves? Can we even be alone? Or do we get sad and bored? What would your face look like?
Alone in a public space, we often reflect. About our actions, our problems and where our place is. As we cannot let go of our face, our emotions and feelings can sometimes become visible, through facial expressions. I find it interesting that every human around you can read them and associate them with a meaning. Almost like a universal language, one thing that we all have in common.
Through my daily routes I encounter masses of people, all connected to millions more by the touch of their fingers. As a crowd they are one - but every individual is pursuing a different goal. They are so many, so similar but yet so different. So busy, that sometimes they are not able to acknowledge the actual life around them. Pushing their emotions down, to keep a straight face and to just function.
I am looking for the moment where a stranger leaves his or her self-awareness and the wish of how they want to be perceived behind. Falling deeply into thoughts of what is moving them in their reality. What triggers that brief moment? – When they lay down the facade and become themselves, a vulnerable and intimate situation.
There lays my fascination, to capture that very same moment of letting go, that I see in myself, in somebody else. Because I am alone with my camera.
"visual reality" C print 75x110 cm
I often think about her, look at pictures of her and I try to visit her whenever I am in or around Düsseldorf. Then I am wondering, who she would be. What she would look like, how she would smell, how she would think? How would it feel to be around her? What would she say about my photography? Would she approve of what I do? Would she get it? Would she hug me? Would she show love to me? And how can you miss somebody that you have not seen for almost 20 years so unbelievably much? This is my bachelor thesis, titled „visual reali- ty“. It‘s about my mother and how we can be together through photography, even though she is not with us no more.“
